Gaining Space in a Small Apartment Renovation

A small flat cannot gain square metres, but it can gain usable space. Layout, doors, storage, light and colour decisions that win back room.

In a small apartment the problem is often not the lack of floor area but the way it is divided. A long corridor, corners nobody uses, doors that take up half a room when opened and radiators in awkward places all reduce what each square metre can do. A renovation does not change the size of the flat, but it is the best chance to win those losses back.

Find the dead zones

Start with a measured plan of the flat and draw the routes people actually walk. How do you get from the entrance to the kitchen, from the bed to the bathroom, from the living room to the balcony? Areas with no function other than passage show up on the plan straight away.

The corridor is where most space is lost. Sometimes part of a partition can be removed so the corridor becomes part of the living room; sometimes a shallow storage run can be built along its length. Load-bearing walls, however, may only be touched with a specialist's assessment and the proper approval.

The position of radiators and air-conditioning units can also be rethought. A long, low radiator under the window instead of a tall one, or underfloor heating, can free a whole wall for furniture. Because this affects pipe routes, the decision has to be made before the services work begins.

Doors and swing clearances

An ordinary hinged door needs roughly its own width of clear floor in front of it to open. In a small flat several such doors together take up a lot of room. Alternatives include:

pocket doors that slide into the wall;
surface-mounted doors that slide along the wall;
folding doors;
removing the door altogether between related zones.

A pocket system needs a cavity in the wall as thick as the door, and this must be planned at the start, when partitions are being built. Opening up a wall later to fit a pocket frame is far more work. It is also worth reconsidering which way doors open: a bathroom door that opens outwards into the corridor frees space inside the bathroom.

Storage in and on the walls

When storage is short, belongings end up on the floor and the room feels smaller. A renovation is the moment to plan recesses and in-wall depth: a service niche for meters, shallow shelving along the corridor, the space above a door, the area under a window.

For floor-to-ceiling storage, fixing points in the ceiling and walls are planned in advance. In plasterboard partitions, timber or metal reinforcement is placed inside for heavy wall-hung items. That detail later lets you hang shelving without opening the wall.

The window reveal is another unused reserve. A widened window board can become a seat or a small work surface, with space for boxes underneath. In that case air circulation must be kept so the radiator's heat can still reach the room.

Ceilings, light and visual space

A deep suspended ceiling makes a small room feel even tighter. If services need hiding, it is usually better to drop the level only in the corridor or bathroom and keep the full height in the main rooms.

Light directly changes how big a space feels. Several lighting scenes instead of a single central fitting, wall-washing light and corners that are not left dark all push the boundaries of the room outwards. Light-coloured walls, the same flooring throughout the flat and minimal threshold strips let the eye travel from one room to the next without interruption.

Multi-purpose zones

In a small flat no room should have just one function. A workspace by the living room window, a breakfast bar that doubles as the dining table, a wardrobe area in the bedroom separated by a curtain are all examples. These solutions move electrical points and lighting, so they need to be decided at the design stage of the renovation.

It helps to see the options in a computer model before deciding. A three-dimensional view shows door swings, passage widths and how light falls far more clearly than a paper plan.

Leaving furniture until later is a mistake too. The sizes of the sofa, bed and table should go onto the plan before the renovation, because sockets, light switches and radiators are positioned around them. In a small flat, a mismatch of thirty centimetres can block an entire passage.

For compact flats, Zaferoğlu İnşaat can model several layout options on screen before a single wall is touched, and then carry out the renovation itself. Write to us if you would like to explore together what the layout of your small flat could offer.

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